Category Archives: Shop

The Rapitorial Bracelet includes an engraved nameplate. Add you horse’s name, barn name or date of birth to this nameplate. Both the front and the back can be engraved.

I know you’re dreaming about turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce, but it’s time to think about holiday shopping, too! What better gift to give the horse lover in your life than a horse hair bracelet made from the tail of your loved one’s favorite horse or horses (I can combine more than one together!)

Since each item is handmade by me, I need time clean it, braid it, finish it and get a fine piece of jewelry back in your hands for gift giving. Here are this year’s deadlines:

Horse hair jewelry orders that need to be completed and delivered by Christmas, must be to me by December 10, 2013.

The horse hair needs to be in my hands with an order form on or (preferably) before December 10 so I can start on your jewelry.

Orders received December 11 – December 17 that are needed for December 25 gift giving will include a $30 per item rush fee.

All horse hair must be in my mailbox by December 17 for Christmas delivery. Any orders and horse hair received after December 17 will be delivered after Christmas.

Your horse hair and order forms can be sent to:
Red-Tail Designs, LLC
813 Porter St.
Easton, PA 18042

You can send a check along with your order form and horse hair, or I can invoice you when I receive the order so you can pay with PayPal or a credit card over the internet.

Keep in mind that if you don’t know which jewelry piece to pick, you can always give a gift certificate. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or call me at 610-905-8399.

This Garden Gala bracelet with blue beads is heading across the country to a customer in California. I love to mix different shades of the same color. And blue pops on any color horse hair. You can get a bracelet like this made with any color beads.

Garden Gala Bracelet with lobster clasp

Staying on this side of the country, this Garden Gala bracelet is heading right over the border to New Jersey to a returning customer. The classic look of a Garden Gala-style bracelet looks great on men or women.

Just shipped out these and 4 other custom pieces to a family in Florida who wanted to honor their horse. I love the way these Leap Year-style bracelet turned out. The white is the horse’s mane hair and the brown is the tail hair.

Personally I think all the holiday hoopla shouldn’t start until after Halloween. On Nov. 1 you can break out the Christmas carols and stores can heap upon us trees and sparkly ornaments and the like. But until Nov. 1, it’s still fall and pumpkins and trick or treat.

On the other hand, I think about holiday gift giving year-round. I’m always shopping for the perfect gift.

The perfect gift for the horse lover in your life is a custom horse hair bracelet! You send me the horse hair, I wash it and braid it, adding beads and sterling silver, even gold if you like. A piece of your favorite horse with you all the time.

Check the horse hair tab above to check out the different jewelry styles. If you’re not able to sneak into the field and clip a bit of horse tail, I offer gift certificates for purchase in any denomination. You can also order custom jewelry without sending me horse hair and I will use the tails I have in stock. Choose from white, black, brown or any combination of the three.

Creating this jewelry by hand takes time, so keep in mind these deadlines as you contemplate which horse hair jewelry piece to buy for a friend or put on your wish list.

Horse hair must be in my hands for the order to be placed. Send your horse hair to me as soon as possible.

I prefer to have horse hair before November 24 for custom pieces.

Any horse hair arriving after November 24 will incur a $20 per piece rush fee for Christmas delivery.

All horse hair must be to me by December 1 to be made into jewelry for Christmas delivery.

I’ve added some new items to my Etsy shop and not just any items, but my two favorite pieces I have in stock right now.

First up are these horse hair earrings above. I love the earrings. The hammered bead cone on top of the horse hair and garnet just makes these look so classy. Hopefully I can get some more of these bead cones and add them to most of my horse hair earrings.

Often I use a variety of bead to finish off the earrings, which give the earrings a rustic feel, like those at right. But these shiny hammer sterling tops really kick it up a notch, as Emeril would say, and give it the flash and sophistication needed for a more classic style.

The other reason I love these: the photo actually captures the color of the garnet drops. I really need to invest in an SLR camera and macro lens. Not in the budget today, so I need to figure out the intricacies of my current camera, and I’m not exactly an ace. I snap lots of photos and hope for the best. The stars aligned, or maybe the lighting was just right, when I took that picture.

Next up is this pair of quilled earrings.

I love these because they are my second “break out” piece (I’ll be posting my first break out piece later this week). By break out piece I mean I finally made the craft my own and did my own thing.

Porcupine quillwork is a very old art and much of what is know about it was collected by a Smithsonian scientist in the early 1900s.By the time he talked with quillworkers who’d learned their craft from generations of other quillworkers this technique was falling out of favor among most Native American Indians. There isn’t much information on quillwork, and it makes you wonder how much of craft was lost along the way.

I’m not of Native American descent (at least not that I know of) and had no one to teach me the techniques, so for years I’ve been teaching myself porcupine quillwork by reading books, looking a museum pieces and using classic trial and error. The designs and techniques I’ve done up until recently have been literally by the book, or the way people interpreted the creation of quillwork, so I could learn the techniques. With these earrings I decided to do a different shape with the quills and the leather. An artist was born.

This was reinforced yesterday while listening to a CraftCast podcast interviewing Thomas Mann. Imitation is how we learn, he said, and once you move beyond the imitation you can become your own artist. Mann goes on to explain how imitation as learning manifests itself at craft show where in a certain time period all the work looks similar. (An interesting note for you locals: Thomas Mann embarked on his art-laden path at 8 years old when he began attending the Baum School of Art in Allentown.) The podcast is worth a listen, as are most of Alison Lee’s CraftCast podcasts.

I’ll keep you updated as I add more pieces to my shop in the next few days.

In the meantime, I took a little fieldtrip into my beadbox to make a few gifts for Mother’s Day and birthdays. Here are the results:

Hematite and porcelain bead necklace with…

…matching earrings.

A pair of bead and pearl earrings.

My friend picked out the red porcelain beads and pink cylinders with black polka dots and I made them into earrings for her. Hope she likes them.